A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap world

The Munin access graph for Apache on ironbelly.openstreetmap.org shows a decline in the number of requests after the redirect on port 443 was enabled. 1 | Image: munin.openstreetmap.org

About us

ERRATUM: In the last issue of weeklyOSM we used an image from this video and stated that it was Newcastle, but it wasn’t. The picture showed the city of Liverpool. It was an oversight from one of our editors who is a fan of Newcastle United. 😉

Mapping

OSM contributor Adam Schneider has mapped features of the recent volcanic eruption in Leilani Estates, Hawaii including fissures and lava flows.

Chris Eshun, a youthmapper from Ghana, made a map of recently flooded areas in Tarkwa using OSM data.

Paul Johnson points out that a more completionist view towards lane tagging to include bicycle lanes may be better than the wiki’s view, which encourages error by omission in complex lane situations. The most common answer he receives is that changing the meaning of a tag that is used millions of times is counterproductive at this point and to propose a new tag, which includes lanes of any kind.

Community

OpenStreetMap Belgium’s ‘Mapper of the month’ features Yasunari Yamashita and Tomoya Muramoto. Yasunari hosts a continuous mapping party in Japan. Tomoya is also active as an editor for the Japanese language team of WeeklyOSM.

sev_osm publishes a Twitter moment about two weeks of OSM and free Geomatics training in N’Djamena (Tchad) targeted to local students, teachers and professionals from both the private and public sectors. The courses were facilitated with the help of members of Chadian community and a Togolese mapper with the support of the International Organization of Francophonie (OIF).

OpenStreetMap Foundation

The minutes of the OSMF’s License Working Group meeting on May 10th is available. The topic was mainly regarding various data protection concerns.

A blog entry in the official OpenStreetMap blog summarizes upcoming changes in connection with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

An FAQ of the OSM Foundation answers several data protection questions currently asked by many website operators who integrate services of the OSM Foundation (tile.openstreetmap.org, nominatim.openstreetmap.org, api.openstreetmap.org).

The Minutes of the Data Working Group meeting on March 13th is online.

Events

The details about the academic track submission for FOSS4G Europe 2018 are available now.

Maps

Hartmuts MapOSMatic instance has recently served its 20,000th request.
It has also received a database upgrade/reimport to be able to render OpenStreetMap Carto v4.x stylesheets, so the OSM default style is now up to date with the OSM website again.
There’s also now a DokuWiki instance running on the server that provides more detailed usage instructions, descriptions of available stylesheets, and other information related to the print service.

Alex Kemp reports on landrises and landfalls due to termination of mining activities and the effects of stopping the pumping that kept the shafts from flooding on the underground water tables.

switch2OSM

A team at MIT is currently developing a new navigation method that relies less on highly detailed maps and more on sensor technology which also makes use of OpenStreetMap data.

Software

A Java bug in Debian renders JOSM unusable for all users of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Long term support). Meanwhile user abienvenu created a Docker container for JOSM so we can get by while waiting for Ubuntu to fix this in an update.

Apple cracking down on applications that send location data to third-parties

MapsMania blogs about Antirubbersheeter, a tool that ease the use of Leaflet with any image, for instance with vintage maps.

Programming

In response to Google’s price increase and not totally satisfied with switch2osm.org‘s tutorial u/Overv created a batteries included Docker image containing a way to follow minute diffs of OSM and render tiles for a given region. As he will use this in production himself, it will be kept up-to-date.

Complying with the GDPR will require changes to OpenStreetMap.org’s registration form for new mappers and requesting explicit agreement of all mappers to the new API’s and website’s terms of use. The technical implementation on how to accomplish this is being discussed on GitHub.

As announced previously planet.openstreetmap.org now redirects HTTP requests arriving on port 80 to port 443 (HTTPS).

Mapping

The proposal for a new key spacing=*receives both positive and negative comments on the tagging mailing list.

In Italy getting children to school in accompanied groups (‘walking buses’) is organised to the point there schedules are posted on poles along the route. On the Tagging mailing list there is a proposal to tag these in a similar way to bus stops, as a sort of public transport without a vehicle.

Bryan Housel, the maintainer of the iD editor, explains on the tagging mailing list, why iD introduced, via the preset mechanism, new undocumented tags related to vehicle servicing. The topic did not generate a lot of interest on the mailing list, and a question as to whether other tags have been introduced in this way remains unanswered.

Community

A Reddit user compares the frequency of ground-level parking in the downtowns of 50 US cities making use of OSM data.

You are invited to add your nominations to the OpenStreetMap Awards 2018 – the call for nominees will close on 31th of May.

HOT welcomes this year’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC) students and Outreachy participants. Note that HOT’s participation in GSoC this year is distinct from that directly under the OSM name (See below).

Imports

Official Danish government address data was first imported to OSM in 2009. Now a new web app AutoAWS for automatically maintaining address nodes within Denmark is under development. First live test runs have been performed.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

A German instance of uMap is planned to relieve the French servers. An application for funding to make this possible was submitted to FOSSGIS e.V.

The OpenActive team from the Open Data Institute (ODI) seeks people to interview from OSM or OSMF as part of a study on open data for sport and physical activity.

The organisers of State of the Map 2018 in Milan, Italy invite attendees to the social event on the night of Saturday, July 28th.

OSM US invites you to the hackathon in the Mapbox offices of Washington, DC, on May 21st and 22nd.

Humanitarian OSM

In Somalia, 500,000 people are affected by severe flooding. HOT is looking for mappers to help.

HOT has received a donation from the Digital Impact Alliance (DIA). Interested open source projects can also apply for funding by 31 May.

Education

The HOT Training working group will be hosting the May HOT Community Webinar on Monday, May 21st, 14:00 UTC and it will be focused on learning to use JOSM.

Maps

JB used Maperitive to create a map of a village in France. He shares the code used to accomplish this on GitHub.

Joe Matazzoni, product manager of the Wikimedia Foundation, introduces the planned innovations on the Wikipedia maps in the framework of the Map Improvements 2018.

In order to better support the Bike to Work initiative, the Canadian advocacy group Bike Ottawa created a platform that helps cyclists with planning safe routes. The data comes from OSM, as they provide speed limits, street widths, and the presence of bike lanes, which is useful to measure the traffic stress level.

switch2OSM

OpenStreetMap is used on the information screens of the Irish bus company Bus Eireann and on a public bus in Malaga, Spain as well.

Democlub uses OSM in their site to enable voters to find their polling stations. The site was live during the recent local elections in Britain which took place on Thursday 3rd May

Starting June 11 both an API key and payment details will be required to use Google Maps’ services. Prices for many users are likely to increase, in some cases sustantially. See the entry on the Google Maps blog and the alternative view of the subject on geoawesomeness.com.

Licences

Ilya Zverev’s OSM Conflator import tool – which is used for the NavAds gas station import – suggests users can use Google Street View for validation. An issue has been raised with the DWG as this seems contrary to existing policies.

The OSM Carto style developers discuss how a style comparable to OSM Carto using vector tiles might be implemented.

On the OpenTopoMap, the names of lakes are marked along the path of the centre line of the longest loops. This results in a very professional map. User maxbe explains the algorithm used by the renderer to determine this line from the shore.

Releases

Did you know …

Other “geo” things

Ollie O’Brien writes about maps of ground deformation in London caused by the construction of Crossrail. The data were collected using a type of Synthetic Aperture Radar: InSAR.

Planet Labs did an interesting spin on the standard straight down satellite shots: they angled the camera from 280 miles up. (via BoingBoing) Earth’s Wonders …

Levente Juhász is seeking help for his PhD research about geo-social media and mapping platforms. He studies people’s online behavior from a geospatial point of view. More info on how to help can be found on his website.

An article at Sitepoint shows how to build indoor office maps using WRLD, QGIS and OSM.

The longest land and sea routes on earth are discussed in an article in Der Spiegel.

[1] Small multiples visualisation of drive time analysis worked up as 3D corals.